By Doug Creamer
It’s Back to School
How can students be going back to school already? It still feels like summer. When I was a kid, school started the day after Labor Day. That changed long ago. It’s so hot students might as well be in the air conditioned classrooms. It’s not just the public schools that have started, but colleges are back, too.
Hopefully, families enjoyed a vacation and spending some quality time together. It’s always great to get away and hard to come home and head back to work and school. One thing good about returning to school is that families can get back into their routines. Routines help us maintain our daily lives.
It’s time to be back in school and learning. Did you take a “first day of school” picture of your kids? That was an annual event at our house when I was growing up. We got some new clothes and shoes for the new school year. You have to take a picture. I took a picture of my last first day of school the year that I retired. Then I took another picture of my very last day of work when I retired. I have a t-shirt on that says, “Retired teacher, every child left behind!”
Hopefully, teachers are refreshed and ready to teach a new group of students. Trying to teach a post-Covid, tech-savvy group of students has got to be a challenge for even the best teachers. Teachers must learn to apply new teaching methods to reach the next generation of learners. I hope our students have a good, safe year where their minds are challenged and they create great life-long memories.
I am currently teaching in the high school equivalency program, which operates on a year-round schedule. We enroll new students several times a year, hoping to help them graduate. For some of our students it has been many years since they went back to school. For others it hasn’t been too long since they were in school. What we hope is to catch them on fire for learning so they can see themselves not only graduating but pursuing their dreams.
Sometimes the problem is that we don’t see in ourselves the ability to grow and move past the challenges to succeed. That’s why we need to go back to school. This same concept applies to our spiritual lives. We find ourselves up against a challenge that feels too daunting. We begin to believe the lies that we will never be able to overcome, never graduate from the struggles to success. That’s when we need to head back to school.
We don’t literally need to go back to school, but we need to re-educate our minds which have convinced us that we can’t do the thing that God knows we can. How do we change our thinking when it begins to work against us? We have to head back to a spiritual school. The first stop is in The Book! We need to read The Good Book and see what God says about us. Doesn’t the Bible teach us that we are overcomers, champions, and victors? We need to dig into the scriptures and find those promises and meditate and memorize them.
Next, we need to engage our faith. We need to tell our minds that we believe God’s words and His promises to us because the Bible is the truth. Our faith and trust in God need to educate our minds. We need to begin praying in faith the promises of God; then things are going to begin to change. When we begin to see ourselves the way God sees us, the newly educated mind will start working with us as we take steps of faith to be the overcomer God made us to be.
All of us struggle to grow into the image that God made us, to be the men and women of faith He called us to be. I want to encourage you to go back to school and learn the things that are missing in your journey of faith. Retrain your mind to apply faith in areas where you are struggling. Don’t settle for less than God made you to be. Learning something new is going to be a fight, but I believe it is a battle worth fighting because I know you can and will win. How can I say that so confidently? I know He has called you to be an overcomer. Don’t be afraid to go back to school and learn what you need because I believe you will find the victory you desire.
Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041or doug@dougcreamer.com
